Basement Dweller
by char-tomio
Summary: A young Germanic girl hides a Soviet prisoner of war in her basement. Two-shot. Human AU, inspired by 'The Book Thief' by Marcus Zusak.
1. Chapter 1

**Basement Dweller**

**a/n: Set in the Holocaust times of WWII, slightly based on 'The Book Thief' by Marcus Zusak. Contains character death (because it's based on the story. I dunno, it seems to um, amplify the essence of the stuff..whatever.) Don't own Hetalia nor the novel nor film. Enjoy.**

**BTW, Lilli lives in Germany here. Explanation below.**

* * *

It started with the light thumps in the night when she realized that there was something wrong with the house.

Lilli Zwingli stares at the young woman staring back at her through the mirror. Her choppy blond hair seems to be losing it's shine and her bright green eyes has dark circles under them. She had been suffering from some sort of insomnia these days. Of course, there were the constant factors of her worrying- Her elder brother Vash, her only guardian, died on the way while delivering her to their nearest relatives, Ludwig and Gilbert, who were in the front line. And now, Germany is slowly yet surely losing the war. There is the inflation rate rising frightfully. She has not been eating well at all. Also, there is the threat of air raids and bombing. She has been through a few, and they mostly consist of memories in cramped evacuation camps and scarce food rations. Sure, her people had been through worse, but that does not hardly change the fact that she has had her fair share of suffering. Last, there is her conscience haunting her. There had been countless times when people, mostly Jews and those deemed 'unworthy of life' by the Nazis, would come up to her in the dead of the night, desperately asking for shelter. While she wanted to offer them the few spaces in the house she had to offer, they were chased away wordlessly by neighbors. Her cousins, Ludwig and Gilbert would be in trouble if she is found hiding prisoners in their home. She couldn't find the courage to say yes, anyway.

When she has enough of her daily inspection of guilt, she heads to bed. The young girl wills sleep to come to her as she stares at the cracked white paint of her bedroom walls. Her hands are clasped in prayer, thinking about Vash, Ludwig, Gilbert and the countless people suffering. Her heart sinks like a stone, just thinking about them.

The dark of the night plagues her with many memories.

* * *

It is midnight when she hears a loud crash downstairs. Her body is still under sleep's spell, thinking that it must be one of her mind's illusions. The house is silent but she is soon convinced that it is real when she hears heavy footsteps. Could it be that her cousins, Gilbert and Ludwig has returned?

"Vetter Ludwig?" she calls out, holding a kerosene lamp in front of her. "Vetter Gil?" The light reveals nothing but the familiar sights of the rickety flat. No response. The wind howls through the cracks.

She gasps at the resounding distant clamor. The kitchen, she thinks. Upon arriving there, another bump is heard, coming from somewhere further down. The glass lantern clinks as she runs.

Lilli finds herself choking with her breath in front of the basement door. She is certain that she locked it some time ago, but there she stands, door slightly ajar. Swallowing up all fear, she pushes the door open. It makes a ghostly, creaking sound that scares her all the more. Sign of the cross. Lamp in front of her, trembling in her hands.

Hopefully, it was not a ghost.

The wooden stair steps squeak, threatening to snap halfway with each cautious step she takes. Dusty floorboards feel rough under her soles. Soot-covered brick walls and boxes and crates and a man-

Wait, a man?

A large body groans in pain as Lilli frantically removes her foot from his chest. She traps a scream in her throat, but falls over the warped floorboards. Her voice is lost.

Something worse than a ghost.

* * *

There is no more time for questions and hesitation. Thankfully, he is still alive yet, barely breathing. Lilli works quickly, moving around in the darkness of the house, heaving sack cloth and old beddings down the basement, cleaning the him off the blood and dirt and many unrecognizable stains. He is many things, but definitely not German, as evidenced by his appearance, or how he appeared to her in the dark. He wakes up while she is busy bandaging him.

The man, this man tries to speak, but only a throaty rasp comes out. She is alarmed when he uses his last iota of energy to resist and break free. The urgency of the situation leads them to forget the use of words, and their struggle ends with him falling back to the beddings, crying in pain. She is scared, she has never spoke to someone, man nor woman, other than his family, let along come close to strangers. But she finds courage and assures him that he is safe by singing to him, the only thing she could think of at the time being. He calms down, along with the gentle touching of his hair. His hair, she thinks, is like the soft down of young birds in the countryside. He soon falls asleep, but she still sings.

She spends the whole night awake, standing watch while he sleeps. As morning dissolves the darkness in blue light, she sees his face better, clearer. His hair is silvery-gray, big ears, big eyebrows, big nose, skin pallid, almost transparent from weakness. Very large compared to her, but also very thin. He'd probably be hungry when he wakes again. She studies him once again. Possibly in his early 20s. He wears a scarf and a blood-soaked overcoat. A military uniform of some sort. Her eyes feel heavy and in deep need of rest, so she unconsciously falls asleep somewhere beside him.

Lilli wakes up with a fraction of his scarf bundled around her neck.

* * *

When he is strong enough to stand, she leads him to the living room. They talk. His name is Ivan Braginski and is from the Russian Red Army. He has a passable understanding of German and talks very slowly, unsurely and often has difficulty expressing himself, though he loves talking. She often has to correct some words in his speech. More than often, they have to talk by drawing pictures.

Ivan helps with the cooking and cleaning and getting stuff which she is unable to reach in her limited height. In his free time, he knits. He does not seem to be embarrassed, something which she admired. So side by side, he knits as she sews. He knits stuff mostly meant for her while she sews back the torn parts of his uniform.

Two broken souls become fast friends through their shared pains, hobbies and all those times shared.

All in exchange of offering him a safe place to stay.

* * *

Things change in time.

His improvements are more obvious than hers. He gains the weight he has lost in the battlefield. His face is not dirty, his hair is not greasy and his eyes no longer have the tired, desperate look of someone who has seen Death take men everyday. His round cheeks grow larger with smiles, and his bright violet eyes are always clear with her reflection shining upon them.

Her transitions is as invisible as the change. She finds it easier to smile and hardly has memories of loneliness. No. Not while he was here, keeping her busy with all the things he has to say. She does not spend her nights watching, criticizing herself in front of the mirror for what she has done wrong. She does not carry the burden of the world, or rather Germany, in her heart anymore.

And in time, they find more and more about each other.

Ivan learns more about the young mistress of the household. From the tragedies and grief that followed her birth, her father's coldness and disdain towards her, him dropping her to school one day and never returning, the tired look on her brother's face when he drudges to keep them alive, those nights without supper, countless times of returning home to an empty house. Lilli has only been to school once. She is illiterate and empty, not yet a complete human being, but the wisdom she possesses is beyond her, even his years, and cannot be gleaned in books. Because he knows, and she does not, the 24-year-old teaches her how to read. She has not stopped reading since, and he tries to quell her appetite by writing short stories for her everyday.

Lilli learns that Ivan indeed broke into the house by smashing a window with the faucet pipe he ripped out of the backyard. She learns how he and his comrades surrendered to the Germans, only to get gunned down and miraculously surviving. She learns how he survived being shipped to concentration camps, waking up to the sound of firing squads and living a life where people die everyday. He finally escaped Auschwitz with help and the rest, he does not remember. She understands his dramatic transitions of friendly, dozy, depressed and friendly again and again and again. She understands his need to inebriate himself in alcohol every night. She understands why he is different, his momentary insanity, his weirdness. She understands and accepts it all.

She hides him for two years and danger only came once- when Ludwig and Gilbert returned. Once again, he hid in the cold, dusty basement, surviving on the rations she sends every midnight. They left after three months and by that time, Ivan looks exactly like the first time she saw him- dirty, weak and thin. He is also ill.

The lamp flickers unsteadily. Yellowed pages rustle as they are flipped. Soon, Ivan hears the familiar soothing voice of his angel, reading about a man who ferried people across the river with his tiny boat.

"The man received a wolf, a goat and a basket of cabbages." she read out. "If he carried the wolf, the goat would eat the cabbages. And if he ferried the cabbages, the wolf would eat the goat. He could carry the goat first, leave the wolf with the cabbages, but then, what happens next?"

She looks away from her book and sees a ghost of a smile on his pale lips. "What do you think happens next?"

Lilli catches a glimpse of his teeth. "Call friends to man two boats and carry them across the river at the same time. But that would be too bothersome, da?"

She giggles. "Ja. He of course carried the goat first, and then..?"

Ivan shrugs, not really in the best condition to think. Lilli smiles, feeling victorious about winning their little game. "He then took the cabbages with him."

"He did? Then how-"

"After that, he took the goat back again and ferried her back where the wolf was."

"Chto?"

"He took the wolf across the river.."

"Oh, I see where this is getting, but.."

"..And after leaving the wolf with the cabbages-"

"-Again-"

"-He finally went back, took the goat with him and the story is finished." she turns to the much-amused Russian. "Did you like it?"

The silverette nods. "I would have took the goat first, then tied her to a tree, ferried the cabbages and placed it where the goat cannot reach, and got the wolf last. Would be more conventional, da?"

Lilli giggles and proceeds to read him another story. By the time he drifts to sleep, his head is filled with old Germanic myths she learned from her cousins and some stories that she made herself. The tone of her voice, which he loved so much, echoes through the dark space of her mind and sings him to sleep.

Sleep.

He misses the idea of sleep. For the three months he stayed in the basement, his mind makes it hard for him to close his eyes. Yes, he's had a lot of sleep, but not rest. Those two words were as different as heaven and hell.

Closing his eyes meant opening the gateway of memories.

"Moy dorogoy.."

Memories of ropes, chains, gas, firing squads, living corpses and all the horror in Auschwitz, even treading as far back to Russia, where the Red and White would clash. The Red always won. There would always be drops and streaks of red over the white snow.

Memories that would leave him restless, desperate for her presence. Memories that would leave him pondering whether to sneak in and risk being seen by Nazis to steal some alcohol or just scream so he could just be shot already.

Memories that kill all hopes of rest.

"..when do you think will the war end..?"

The voice is soft and shivering and it breaks her heart.

"Soon."

* * *

**The song Liechtenstein sings to Russia in the part where she calms him down is 'Your Protector' by Fleet Foxes (imagine a Rie Kugimiya cover of the song). It's some sort of uh..I dunno, a 'thank you' gift, I guess to a fellow writer named vvheel (I know you're reading this ;), who also writes very very good stories of this pairing. As I said, this is a two-shot, and the next chapter would be out tomorrow or the next day.**

**Merry Christmas.**

**-Char Tomio**


	2. Chapter 2

Soon, she says. It brings a smile on his face. It sounds like a promise. A beautiful promise of redemption. _Soon._

"Words are life, malysh. Yours just gave me the reason to live." She blinks confusedly. The words sink deep.

"But sometimes, they can mean death." He does not say anything more, but nods, for they are true. Such a wise woman, this young girl.

What will happen after the war?

For one, people would be able to sleep soundly at night. No more bomb threats. No more food rations. No more crying and weeping over lost lives. Things like these take along time to recover, but still, it is the beautiful sign of progress.

"What will happen to you?"

It is a question so sudden that it shocks him. He shrugs.

They say that war is a soldier's life.

Wrong. War is no one's life, and yet, everyone's death. People don't live in war. They die. Some survive, but that does not count as living. Survival is different from living.

They are so different.

"Hopefully not the concentration camps again." he finally replies.

But deep inside him, he feels that no matter how many twist and turns and interventions his fate offers, the concentration camps will always be waiting for him.

* * *

He wakes up in a daze. His head is swimming, not because of being pushed from his subconscious to reality, but vice versa.

And he does not know it.

_'Hallo, Ivan',_ Auschwitz greets him again. And it's happy to see him. Ivan feels bile rise up his throat, surrounded once again by decaying flesh and slow death. Thin, mangled hands slowly reach out, beckoning him to die along with them. His blood freezes in his veins. Like the coward he knows he is, he runs away.

Run, run, run, past the half-dead prisoners standing still in roll call and the yelling SS guards, past the resounding shots from the firing squad, past the gas chambers, past Josef Mengele playing with his human mice, past the sight of his maddened self, running, crying, desperately squeezing himself into a crevice in the wall. He sees the look of fear and relief in his eyes as he finally breaks through. His comrades wave goodbye and he does not wave back because he is afraid. The world is silent. Violet eyes follow his every move, finally truly seeing what he was like at those moments. As soon as his figure disappears in the fog, the remaining men inside the cell turn to him with their dead eyes and tears of blood. Ivan takes a few steps backward and is driven into a wall. But that's impossible, he thinks. He has ran away with their help.. Then, he realizes that, no. He has not yet run away.

_'Come back, you little traitor.'_

A part of him is still in Auschwitz, strapped to the surgeon's cutting board. As long as he has that tattoo on his forearm, as long as he remembers that he is no better than them, as long as he has the slightest recollection of the hellish abattoir, he will never be truly free.

_"Really? You have done that?"_

Ivan wakes up with a gasp and notices small hands around his shoulder. She is there, wide-eyed and as shocked as he is. Yes. Shocked without the horror. His clothes are one shade darker with sweat.

Without any hesitation, he latches himself onto her. He is trembling, broken and terrorized. His violet eyes, the violet which Mengele had wanted to change color, have warm tears fighting for space. He knows he needs her. She knows, too.

The young girl does not seem to be bothered. Ivan feels a small hand stroke his hair soothingly, and hears a familiar song. The same song when she first found him. The song that always sings him to sleep.

But now, it doesn't.

Even his breath is shaking. He feels the need to say something, to say more, but bites his lip, hesitating.

Hesitation has always been his worst enemy.

She shifts his head onto his lap and proceeds to sing again. Sometimes, he sings along to the parts that he knows. As mellow as it is, the song reminds him of being trapped in the middle of a forest bathed in the orange sunset light.

"Ivan," she softly asks, "What did you dream of?" She knows what he dreams of. They have had this talk numerous times before. When she'd feel him wordlessly crawl into bed with her like a child and wake up like he had did just now, staying eerily quiet for the whole day.

But of course, the nightmares vary.

Lilli feels the soft rise and fall of his chest.

"Iz not pretty." he manages to breathe, blocking his shut eyes with his forearm. A series of tattooed numbers peek out from the sleeve.

She bends down and whispers in his feathery hair. "Tell me, liebe."

The young girl knows about the world's numerous atrocities. It made her older, wiser, something which made her earn his deep respect. He finally relents to soft hands running through his silver locks, telling her what he deemed necessary about Auschwitz once again. He did not tell her about the crucial little detail on how he actually escaped prison. Lilli listened carefully and soon enough, were engaged in a conversation about their personal ghosts haunting them everyday before falling asleep in each other's arms.

* * *

Vicious knocks on the door startles them both out of their slumber. Ivan's side immediately feels cold as she runs up to answer the door. He, of course, knows what he must do. He gathers his beddings, piles up a wall of forgotten crates and hides.

Returning to the girl, Lilli opens the door and gasps. Her cousin brothers, still in SS uniforms. Ludwig carries his brother, Gilbert, who is heavily bandaged.

The albino, with a smirk, narrates being 'unawesomely' injured when a bomb hit his unit's truck. Ludwig was obligated to take him home, and getting assigned on other jobs on the way.

"What kind of jobs?" Lilli looks away from Gilbert's injuries to her younger cousin brother. Ludwig, as always, has a stern look on his face.

"The usual." he says without even looking at her. The young girl stands up and follows her cousin Ludwig as he shuffles to the basement.

She bravely, but nervously stands in front of the older man. "What kind of work, Vetter Ludwig?"

By this time, he has nothing to do but speak. "Dealing with the 'undesirables'." Lilli knows what exactly he is talking about. "Stand aside, bitte. I'm going to get some beer."

"But, there is no beer."

Ludwig simply glances at her, and proceeds to open the basement. She silently prays that he will not find him. The blond German combs through the shabby wreck of the basement. He notices unusual crate formations and paintings on the walls. An alphabet written in chalk stands out to him the most.

"So, you've learned how to read?"

"Ja." she cautiously looks around for any sign of him. Ludwig approaches a chest and takes out a green bottle of alcohol. It feels lighter than it should be and the man slowly grimaces as he notices that one of them is empty. Actually, all the remaining bottles in the trunk are empty. Thankfully, Ludwig does not seem to mind and is about to leave when he catches sight of a piece of metal.

"Lilli." She straightens up at his call. "What is our faucet pipe doing here?"

The young girl trails her braids unsurely. "..Someone tried to steal it." Ludwig crosses his eyebrows but leaves with his beer bottles. As not to make her cousin suspicious, she follows him immediately.

Ivan gets really good at hiding, sometimes.

Lilli feels quite smothered with the presence of her two guardians. The house is livelier, no, louder as ever, and yet, she has never felt so alone. Gilbert's noise hardly gives her any space in her mind to think. She cannot even visualize the stories she reads in her mind. Without that critical ability, the story is just plain text written in ink and paper.

She wonders how Gilbert can make so much noise, even when alone.

The young girl treads silently downstairs, hoping to get some peace and quiet in the basement. Lilli holds a bundle of bread, cheese and water in her left hand and her notebook in the other.

"Having a picnic, liebe?"

Dropping her notebook, she turned back to her alabaster-haired cousin. She shuddered as Gilbert crept near her, only to bend down and pick up the notebook.

"Seriously, you wrote these?" he grinned. Lilli couldn't tell whether he is mocking her or not.

"Ja." she politely responded, "And I was hoping to read-"

"Down there?" Gilbert motioned to the basement.

"Ja. I made it my personal study." The albino gives a skeptical eyes on the dusty room and nods. He dramatically shut the notebook and handed it over. Lilli breathes a collective sigh of relief as he steps away from her. As soon as he is gone, she pushes it open and wonders how dusty it became again.

"Ivan," she whispers, searching for any trace of him. The room is silent. Not a single piece of dust moves. Lilli frowns and sits on a crate, flipping the pages. Maybe if she sits around, Ivan would pop out behind one of those box towers he has made.

But there is nothing.

She jumps on her feet, scours every nook and dusty cranny for him. The closest hint of him she finds are the stack of old beddings behind a crate. His faucet pipe remains undisturbed next to the wooden chest of beer.

"Ivan?" she does not know whether it's the dust or the lost feeling of desperation that brings tears to her eyes. The words bounce off the painted brick walls and echo endlessly in her mind. She drops to her knees just as Gilbert runs in, thinking that she's lost it.

Somehow, she agrees with him.

* * *

The bread is warm and freshly baked, but she does not feel it. She does not feel anything. Her thoughts are always with Ivan. Somehow, his appearance and quicker disappearance feels so unreal that she doubts his existence. Maybe he was just a figment of her subconscious. But she still knows how to read. The paintings are there. Everything feels unreal.

Lilli Zwingli looks up at the dust-colored sky and breathes in the ashes.

_It is all so-_

All conspiring thoughts questioning reality are overshadowed when she feels weak pain. A large blond man glares at her as she shrinks and apologizes. It is then she notices the crowd forming around the road. As she is short, she runs forth to find some place where she might be able to take a manageable view. From the crowd, she hears bitter murmurs and comments that are better left unsaid. There are marching feet and chains and..

She sees her stoic cousin Ludwig dressed in SS uniform, beside a parade of starved and scraggly prisoners.

_Dealing with the undesirables._

The crowd makes a lot of noise as they smother her but she hears the bread in her hand calls out. She looks at them.

Because she is small, wearing nondescript clothing and as invisible as ever between the horde of Aryans, her hands tentatively pick up a piece of bread. The food is now screaming at her. For a few hesitant seconds, her grip on it tenses but she finds herself frozen at the sight of silver hair and violet eyes.

Her mouth soundlessly forms the syllables of his name. She unconsciously repeats them over and over, gradually getting louder until he turns his head to the crowd of jeering Germans.

"Ivan!" Pairs of eyes turn to her as she pushes her way through and rushes to the man in the dirty tan coat. The bag of bread is dropped along the way, a few centimeters away from the salivating captives. He stops and turns to her, thereby breaking the line and promptly attracting the soldiers' attention.

Lilli cups his round face into her small hands. "Ivan, is-is this really you..?"

Before he can affirm, she is knocked over by a cruel-looking young man in a green SS uniform. The whip is tense and held up in the air, ready to strike when the Russian man tackles his warden to the ground, rushing over to her. He does not bother to fight back the tears as he kneels over to her young guardian, whispering yes, yes, it is indeed him, the man whom she graciously offered a place, both in the house he broke into, and in her heart, at her own risk. Her arms are tangled around his broad shoulders and she does not care about how dirty his clothes are or how he smells of death.

"It's me, moy dorogoy," he whispers in his broken voice. She weakly reaches out and he helps her up, holding her hand to his cheek and planting a soft kiss on her palm. "You must leave."

"Nein-"

Lilli gasps and Ivan yells in pain as the piece of rawhide cuts through his coat, into the skin of his back. He attempts to stand and the whip once again cleaves his back. Her mind spins. Noise. SS guards yelling. Multiple cracks of the whip. Blood. Beads of red flying about. There are crimson dots of Russian blood on the white of her sleeves. The man- no, the monster prepares to give him his _seventh_ lashing and she embraces him in an attempt to protect him. It cleaves her shoulder.

She feels frozen. She does not feel anything other than the flagellated trail of blood on her shoulder.

A weak, trembling hand strokes her hair reassuringly. Ivan breathes with great pain into her golden hair.

"I..I will come back alive."

His voice is shaking.

"..I promise."

"Ivan!" Lilli regains consciousness as he is torn away from her. The man is restrained by two armed SS guards. She runs and reaches out a hand, and the whip keeps it from going further. She cries out his name before being dragged away by her less-than-pleased cousin. Ivan stands immobilized and his face shows no signs of fighting.

She looks up her cousin Ludwig, with a neutral, yet displeased look on his face. Of course she knew she has done something wrong.

The prisoners start marching once again. And this time, Ivan Braginski has his hands cuffed on his bleeding back.

* * *

"Do you know what you just did?"

_Does anyone in the world know what they are doing?_ She wants to spit those words with such rage that would either make her elder brother Vash feel proud or puny in comparison. But yes, she does not want to fight back. She does not even look at him.

"And you," Ludwig turns to his elder brother, "You were supposed to watch her!" She does not want this nonsense. Lilli leaves them be as they fight. She is sick of fighting. As if this war is not enough.

She sentences herself to solitary confinement in the dusty basement. There, she cries alone, her sobs hollow and breaking as they hit the walls.

In a staggering gait, she roams mindlessly around the space, not knowing where to go. The faucet pipe stands behind her, beyond the range of her unseeing eyes.

Small hands trace the rough surface of the paintings. His paintings. A picture of in story no one can explain. Starry night skies seen by two children sitting on a cliff. On another piece of the wall, there were blue skies, thin sheets of clouds and the dripping golden sun. Below, a large field of sunflowers. She remembers him telling her about his dream of living in a warm place with lots of sunflowers. He often sat in the place where she stands on, staring at it with admiration.

The closest thing to that dream was to dedicate a whole wall to a painting of a sunflower field.

He'd only be able to achieve it after the war.

Lilli feels the need to sit, so she trips towards the place where he last left his beddings- behind the crates. They were in need of washing, but at least better than the floor. Dust floats as she folds them over and heft them up.

In doing so, she sees a book.

A book.

A hand made one, made from the thin yellowed pages of their phone book. She flipped it over, hearing the familiar crisp rustle of paper. The handwriting is messy, unreadable even, as if written in another language. Yet, the weird letters and ink symbols scrawled around carelessly are coherent to her, something which she, and only she, understands. How? It is from these chaotic text that she learned to read. His way of saying that the book is meant for her, and only her.

'Ich habe ein Freund', _I have a friend_. She smiles at his simple choice of words.

There is a drawing of her. A round face, her dress, and braids. It only had dots for eyes and a thin, curved line for a mouth. But she can tell that it is indeed her.

Third page.

* * *

_I grew up in Russia with my grandfather and two sisters._

There is a hand-drawn illustration of an old man, a girl with plaited hair, him in the middle, as evidenced by the large nose and scarf, and a little girl with a bow in her hair.

_I grew up with them and no one else._

...

Fourth page.

_There were some people I knew. There was the village children and my schoolmates._

A crowd of people, with him sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle. She wondered, is this just how he drew himself, or was it really like this in real life?

_They all hated me._

Looking closely, his 'self-portrait' did not look too happy.

...

_I don't know. They loved chasing me. At first, I thought they wanted to play with me, but then, they'd throw stuff and hurt me. There are countless times I thought this was their way of playing with me, but I guess, no. Not even my grandfather could do anything about it._

She touched the drawings. It was him, frantically running away from the rocks and snow flung at him.

_I thought I'd have friends when I grow up, but, no. I guess not even my comrades in the army liked me. Alright. They didn't. They used to throw apples at me. Which is why I sort of grew fat. I'm suddenly starting to think again whether it was an act of friendliness, too.. People are so confusing._

She smiles very much at this.

_I know you're smiling._

...

_Years later in the war, we were captured and sent to prison. I saw many terrible things there._

_But still, I found something unexpected in the most unexpected of all places._

_During the time when no one was looking, someone actually talked to me. Old Jewish men, . They were very friendly, and I guessed, maybe, this was how friendship felt like._

_Time passed._

_The old Jewish men were getting weaker and weaker._

_And I grew more and more scared. I did not want my first friends to leave me so soon._

_But contrary to what I thought, it was me who left them._

_My friends- Josef and David, knew a secret exit and had been planning to escape for a while, now. Finally, we came upon a good opportunity, and helped me escape. The plan was, all three of us were going to escape. But they told me to escape alone. Because I was the only one who could survive._

_They stayed behind to distract the guards._

_I felt like a traitor because I did not convince them enough to come with me._

_I'm thinking that you're there, shocked, saying 'Really, you did that?'. Maybe you think that I'm a really bad person. I think so, too. But when I think deeply, past the guilt and selfish desire to survive, I realize that,_

There are no drawn illustrations in this page. Instead, she hears his otherworldly voice narrating every single word to her. Glimpses of his troubled face would surface and fade away in the white spaces between the text.

_I realize that I would not hesitate to do the same for them._

...

_Of course, no one escapes Auschwitz unharmed. I was shot a few times, but nothing serious. How many hours, how many miles I have covered..I don't know._

_I was driven mad with hunger. And so, at night, in a dark alley, I came upon the first house I saw, ripped out the faucet pipe and broke in by smashing a window._

Lilli tilts her head confusedly. He made a poor attempt of drawing the street from memory. But there is an inked arrow, pointing to the shack, labeled 'Dies Haus'.

_I don't know but I thank whatever force led me to this house._

_At one point, I wished to be shot immediately. It was better than having to die slow and painful in the camps. Because I was tired, I fell asleep in the basement._

...

_I woke up, expecting to see a man standing over with a shotgun pointed at me._

_Instead, I saw a little girl, bandaging me up. At first, I thought I was dead and was seeing an angel, but then, my bullet wounds started to ache, and yes, I was still alive._

_As time passed by, the girl and I slipped into each other's lives very well._

There were multiple drawings of them painting the walls, doing needlework together, and reading.

...

_Now, I live in her basement. Bad dreams still live in my sleep. Sometimes, I wake up and find myself crawling into her bed, and sometimes, I stay away._

_One night, after my usual nightmare, she came to get me. She looked at me as if I was going to die. I wanted to ask her to stay, but I was too afraid. I did not even know why. But she stayed. She sang me to sleep, and when I did not, she asked me, 'What did you dream of?'._

_So I did._

An ink picture of the basement, which seemed more or less a home.

In the opposite page, he is there, sleeping on her lap.

_In return, she explained what her own dreams were made of._

...

_Now, I think we are friends, this girl and me. She has taught me about friendship, even without words. My thoughts go on back to Josef and Nathan._

_And I realize that I must protect this girl._

_Her two cousins, both soldiers, abruptly go home one day and I am forced to hide once again. We both know I cannot. So instead, I run. I have been endangering her life far enough and so, I made this decision. I run away, taking all of the demons I brought with me here away from her._

_For the second time in my life, I leave a friend behind once again._

She wipes the tears before they even drop and stain the ink pictures. A picture of him and her, with their hands intertwined.

_But I leave her with a promise. After all is over, I promise, I will do anything to return to her, to this place alive._

_Because I have a friend waiting for me there._

* * *

1943.

"..Because I have a friend waiting for me there."

She barely finishes the sentence when the bombs rain down.

* * *

A young girl, small with blond braids wearing a blackened dress claws her way out of the wreck. The large crevice in the basement, the one she presumed was the Russian's emergency escape, has saved her. Never before had she been exerted in this way. Her fighting lungs feel like bursting from fatigue. The sky is open. She is not in the basement reading her book.

The book.

Lilli frantically claws through the broken chunks of concrete and wood, in search of her treasure, those painted-over phone book pages. Her dirty palms are gashed and cry red tears. The world chaotically spins around her and here she is, digging for a leaflet.

She lifts her head to look up and her heart falls.

Her street burns red and orange- the war in all it's destructive glory. The smoke-spiced wind burns her eyes, which is probably why she is shedding tears.

There is no one around. The young girl practically stands in the middle of a graveyard. She thinks that everyone is probably safe in the bomb shelters, but the sight of a head of dirty alabaster hair underneath the concrete screamed to her that, no, not everyone survived.

She did not have the gall nor the strength to free his cousin from the rubble that crushed him.

A gashed Iron Cross lay at her feet.

The city lies in smoldering ruins. And she stands in the middle.

* * *

Two years has passed. Lilli has sought refuge in a tailor shop, manned by a kindly Hungarian woman, her cousin Gilbert's best friend. Her life had passed in a blur. She is only 15 but she feels much older after the 1943 bombing had taken everything she knew away from her. The city is slowly recovering after all the terror.

The war officially ended a month ago.

Soon, she had told him. She had not lied.

Yet, she still could not breathe easily.

"Lilli," Elizaveta Hedervary called out, "Let's close up."

She is still standing in front of the counter absentmindedly, but her mind catches up. "J-ja, schwester."

The older woman flashes a look of concern but silently leaves. The war is over, Lilli repeats silently. There is nothing to worry about. She moves towards the back room and collects her stuff- a casual set of clothes, her journal, a pen and a bag full of various books.

She hears the distant ringing of the door.

"I'm sorry, but we've already closed up."

Lilli straps her bag carefully together.

"Is-is there someone named Lilli Zwingli here..?"

Her hands stop momentarily. The sound is calling back to her. Where has she heard that.. Thoughts flow excruciatingly slow as she does not catch bits of their conversation.

"May I ask who's calling her?"

Seconds of silence feel like eternity. The lack of response drowns her with a stream of disappointment and anticipation. Her feet moves faster than her thoughts. She catches sight of Eliza wanting to hit the man with her frying pan and she stops.

She wants to say his name out loud but nothing comes out. It's either she cannot believe what she is seeing or she had forgotten his name. No. She has not forgotten.

A large man wearing a neat enough overcoat. Bright, hopeful violet eyes, a large nose and silver hair like eagle feathers. Round amethysts grow wider in disbelief, a gasp stuck to his throat.

"Lilli,"

She staggers across the room and he barely takes two wide strides, arms reaching out for one another as their bodies are pulled together in a crushing embrace.

"Ivan," she cries into his jacket, the man's larger frame curling around protectively around the young girl's relatively smaller one. The cast iron frying pan sits forgotten on the counter as Elizaveta wipes tears of her own, closing the shop. They slide down the floor, every ounce of energy taken by the mix of emotions- disbelief, bliss, desperation, relief. Ivan openly cries into her golden hair, feeling little fingers run through his hair, like feathers, as she described it.

"I missed you so."

"I missed you more." he pulls her closer, pressing his lips on her forehead.

No more words are exchanged, none are needed this moment. Flowing tears tell how much one had longed for the other, the way they remain in each other's arms cry how they no longer want to be separated, shaking hands relay fear and anxiety and the smiles that are beginning to form on their faces make known their relief and how happy they are to be reunited for good.

The war is over.

* * *

**t/n: malysh- (Rus.) child**

**moy dorogoy- (Rus.) my dear**

**Dies haus- (Ger.) This house**

**(Translation may be incorrect. I use Google Translate.)**

**a/n: Don't own Hetalia, nor the background music I kept playing to inspire me;**

**o Your Protector by Fleet Foxes**

**o Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift ft. Civil Wars**

**o C'est la Mort, I Have This Friend by The Civil Wars**

**o Next to Me by Civil Twilight (yeah, that's a lot of 'civil', eh?)**

**o These Broken Hands of Mine by Joe Brooks**

**o Your Bones by Of Monsters and Men**

**o Misguided Ghosts by Paramore**

**o Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect by The Decemberists**

**o Story of My Life by One Direction**

**There are some direct and indirect quotes that come from the Book Thief. I don't own that, too.**

**Russia and Liechtenstein here are inspired by the characters Max Vandenburg and Liesel Meminger from the said novel. Yes. I don't own them, too. **

**So, yeah, sorry if it came out a little late from what I expected. Happy New Year, everybody.**

**(..everyone's celebrating 2014 and I'm here, writing about WWII. Sometimes, I don't get myself.)**


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